Voter Circle 2.0 has a New Customer – Measure B

I just received a nice chain email from Mountain View Council Member Pat Showalter endorsing Measure B – the Santa Clara County transportation bond. Congratulations to VoterCircle.com and its founder, Sangeeth Peruri, on landing a prominent new customer — the YES on Measure B campaign and a prominent Measure B supporter – Pat Showalter. [She is in the middle of her first term on council.] We wrote about LASD Board Trustee’s socially conscious investing including votercircle.com 1.0 before. This post discusses what seems to be new in the election campaign software.

I had already decided to vote YES for Measure B, so the only aspect of the email I was interested in was whether or not Pat had used Voter Circle softwareto send the email. Unlike the usual mailing services – Mailchimp, Constant Contract, Emma, etc. — Voter Circle does not brand the emails in the footer. So the only way for me to find out for sure was by clicking in the unidentified unsubscribe area… on click here.

And ta da, it was Voter Circle.com that pops up in the browser

Next I clicked that other link, Find my Friends in Santa Clara County… and I am invited by the Yes on Measure B campaign to see who among my contracts can vote…

NEW in the last 60 days with Voter Circle 2.0 ?

Supporter Improvements. New. Now the supporter role – Pat Showalter – can see who opened her Measure B email or not. She can see if they clicked on Find my Friends or did not. That makes this chain email experience much more interesting to supporters. Nice.

Better Policies. The web site does now have a much better and longer EULA and privacy policy than before. The privacy policy says that neither the campaign nor Voter Circle will ever contact a supporter’s contacts.

Campaign Manager Loses Benefits? But with that kind of privacy now, it makes me wonder what useful information is the campaign getting? It is unclear if the campaign gets to see which specific voters on the campaign’s voter list ever open and ever clicked? It remains unclear how many supporter contacts are ever correctly matched to the campaigns voter list in the first place. Godbe Research recently said only 20% of voters on a voter file had emails attached to their VoterID. So what kind of aggregated reports can a campaign get now? Perhaps just the number of “views” by demographic groups? That is not the same “value proposition” as 60 days ago.

Different Value Proposition? It feels like the value to a campaign is lower that Voter Version 1.0. However, providing automated chain letter capability to supporters is worthwhile. If at $100 a month, Measure B motivated 100 supporters to each send its message to 50 people where 50% opened that month….

That’s 2,500 impressions or 4 cents each. This is way cheaper than almost any other type of contact.

The Voter Circle website still has no “Our Customers” page. And still has no public facing information about the process and benefits for a campaign manager. A prospective buyer campaign must contact Sangeeth Peruri. Perhaps the non-disclosure of how things work on the web site is prudent to prevent imitators.

About the author

lalahpolitico

Norma Schroder is an economics & market researcher by trade and ardent independent journalist, photographer and videographer by avocation. Enthralled by the growth of the tech industry over the decades, she became fascinated with the business of local politics only in the past couple of years.